CF Card Receivers

[davast]

I have a HP iPAQ 2210 and have been looking at your site & some others to "get a grip" of what is what "GPS wise" to link into my iPAQ 2210, mainly for car use. This site's forums, reviews, map comparison tables & supplier links have been very helpfull in enlightening me on a new subject matter. I am now thinking of a CF receiver as I already have a Proporta car adaptor & portable battery charger for my iPAQ and don't want to have another "box", e.g. bluetooth gps, to carry around and look after.



I loved the review of the Sysonchip CF Plus at 100% rating and like the look of the Globalsat BC307 at 87.5% rating, but I am sure that you said somewhere else on this site that you are reviewing the Haicom 303MMF shortly. Can you tell me when this review will be out as the Haicom 302CF was only rated at 70%.



I would also like to know if there is any update on the Sysonchip CF Plus being sold in the UK. I don't mind waiting a month if neccesary as long as I buy one with a good review.



I am also thinking of using TTN2 as there are POIs freely available & I wouldn't mind making some of my own up. Hope this has not been too long a topic.

[Dave]

Ah, eagle eyes! . We hope to have a 303MMF shortly, it'll soon be sprouting wings and making it's final migration flight to it's new home, but it will take a few weeks



Regarding SysOnChip, when companies don't have retail outlets or distributor's in UK/Europe, we send them a whole list of company names, MD's, telephone and email addresses. SysOnChip are currently selling around Europe, but are eager to bring the CF Plus to the UK, so you will find in months to come retailers and distributor's in the UK stocking these, but I'm not sure how long it will take from start to finish. What you can be sure of is we helped bring it to the UK!

[DavidW]

Dave,



It's worth commenting that Haicom have now come up with the HI-303E, which appears to be the same as the HI-303MMF, but is cheaper.



Apparently the difference is that the HI-303MMF uses the SiRFstarIIe/LP chipset, and the HI-303E uses an Evermore chipset.







David

[Dave]

That's interesting, I'll take a look at that. The 303MMF landed safely and is sitting here beside me as I type this.

[DavidW]

Haicom also have a HI-303S now - and the differences are finally explained here on their web site.



The different coloured 'plugs' on the hinge is a neat trick to distinguish the different models! My early 303MMF matches the table correctly - it has red plugs.





HI-303MMF is SiRFstar IIe/LP

HI-303S is a SiRF chipset running Xtrac firmware (better sensitivity, possible "lag" issues, less configurability than standard SiRF firmware)

HI-303E is an Evermore chipset



and they're otherwise identical. Price wise, I suspect the 303E will be the cheapest, then the 303MMF, with the 303S the most expensive (I believe SiRF put a price premium on the Xtrac firmware).



globalpositioningsystems.co.uk have the HI-303E for £100 including VAT - and have seemingly dropped the HI-303MMF from their range.





In the non-multimode CF range, there's two options, with the differences explained here.



HI-302LP is SiRFstar IIe/LP

HI-302E is an Evermore chipset





Apart from the different suffix for SiRFstar IIe/LP, I think that then makes their range consistent, as all Haicom GPS mice to my knowledge use Evermore chipsets and the model numbers are all suffixed E.



It looks like Haicom have released a new GPS mouse as well - the HI-204E (main feature is seemingly that it's waterproof).







David

[davast]

Sorry about this. But what's an Evermore chipset? From everything I have read since starting on this GPS quest (7 weeks), the reviews all seem to say that the SiRFstar lle/LP is the most reliable at getting sattelite fixes. Is this not the case?

[Storm1979]

I too could do with this info. After doing some research into the 303MMF I was all set up to purchase one. But if the "E" series is available at a much lower price with little or no performance implications I could be tempted.



Does anyone know if this is the case?



Cheers



Mike

[DavidW]

Someone whose opinion I trust has described the difference briefly as the Time To First Fix is slower with the Evermore chipset than the SiRF. He reckons the signal performance of the Evermore is in-between standard SiRF firmware (HI-303MMF) and SiRF Xtrac firmware (HI-303S).

The SiRF Xtrac firmware is a premium priced product, and at least some regard it as best kept for specialist applications. It will dig out GPS signals where other GPSes simply won't work, but it sometimes seems to lag in its reporting of various parameters (mainly of direction and speed data rather than position, I believe) and it doesn't have the configurability of standard SiRF firmware.


The Evermore doesn't talk the SiRF binary protocol as an alternative to NMEA. Instead, it uses its own Evermore binary protocol.

The features of the two chipsets are similar - all Evermore chipsets seem to have the ability to operate with multiple datums (something that I believe is only possible on SiRF firmware above version 2.30 - but I haven't seen full documentation on the SiRF Navigation Library functions). Recent Evermore chipsets do, I believe, support SBAS (WAAS and EGNOS), just as SiRFstar IIe/LP does.


In practice, an Evermore chipset GPS is likely to operate just fine, particularly if you're not interested in advanced configurability (I'm not sure there's any applications for the Pocket PC to turn SBAS on and off for an Evermore based GPS - whereas there are several options to do this with a SiRF II GPS). There are many seemingly happy users of Haicom GPS mice, which are all Evermore chipset based.


I don't know how well the TomTom GPS application works with Evermore chipset GPSes. It will clearly be fine if you set it to NMEA 0183v2 mode at the correct serial port speed. It doesn't understand the Evermore binary protocol at all.

The one thing I'm not sure of is whether there's a setting that allows the "Reset GPS" functionality in TomTom Navigator working with an Evermore GPS. This can be very useful with a CompactFlash GPS if the internal battery has gone flat - as it provides the GPS both with the correct time and date and a location to start its position fix from. This gives you a dramatic improvement in TTFF, as the GPS immediately knows which satellites are overhead.

Maybe someone with an Evermore chipset GPS to hand can say if any of the settings in the TomTom GPS application(possibly even the "Haicom GPS" one) give working "Reset GPS" functionality. One way to prove this out is to deliberately set the Pocket PC's clock wrongly, "Reset GPS", then see what time and date are shown on the GPS application's first tab. (Don't forget to set your Pocket PC clock correctly again!)



David

[davast]

Thanks for that, DavidW. A very good reply that I understood without to much technical jargon. At least I now have a better understanding of the different chip sets on which to base my decision.

[DavidW]

In another thread, it seems that there might be operational issues between TomTom's GPS application and an Evermore chipset GPS.

I suspect this is purely a configuration issue - but posting a link to that thread here seems wise. You can read that ongoing discussion here.



David

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